Dozens of Microsoft employees from the phone marketing division will be losing their jobs in the near future, as the company continues its “retrenching” efforts and further scales back its phone division.
Over the past couple of years Microsoft has fired tens of thousands of people across the entire company but perhaps some of the worst cuts have been felt by the mobile vision, those employees that came over after the acquisition of Nokia. After a $7.6 billion write-down, more than 7,800 former Nokians lost their jobs, with another few dozen pink slips will be going out shortly.
The news come from Finnish newspaper Helsigin Sanomat, which claims the affected employees are mostly in the marketing department. Microsoft has also confirmed to Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet that any new firings are not part of the original 7,800 that were announced last year.
Over the previous quarter Microsoft has only sold 4.5 million Lumia devices, and the company warned that even fewer sales are expected to take place over the coming months as the software giant is cutting back on the number of phones it launches and will instead focus on some key categories and device, like the long-rumored Surface phone.
As usual, this is a hard but occasionally necessary side of the smartphone business, though that may be of very little comfort to those that have lost their jobs.
Source: Helsigin Sanomat via: ZDNet